Lesson plan
Morenosaurus
Morenosaurus is an extinct genus of plesiosaur from the Cretaceous of what is now California. The type species is Morenosaurus stocki, first named by Samuel Welles in 1943, in honor of Dr. Chester Stock. The species was found by Robert Wallace and Arthur Drescher in the Panoche Hills region of Fresno County. The skeleton they found was fairly complete, and lacked only the head and parts of the neck and paddles; the preserved portion of the trunk and tail is long. The skeleton was originally mounted at Caltech but is now in the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Morenosaurus may have been similar to Elasmosaurus or Thalassomedon, but studies in the early 2000s indicated that the fossils were too scrappy to identify to the family level.
Article summary
Morenosaurus is an extinct genus of plesiosaur from the Cretaceous of what is now California. The type species is Morenosaurus stocki, first named by Samuel Welles in 1943, in honor of Dr. Chester Stock. The species was found by Robert Wallace and Arthur Drescher in the Panoche Hills region of Fresno County. The skeleton they found was fairly complete, and lacked only the head and parts of the neck and paddles; the preserved portion of the trunk and tail is long. The skeleton was originally mounted at Caltech but is now in the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County. Morenosaurus may have been similar to Elasmosaurus or Thalassomedon, but studies in the early 2000s indicated that the fossils were too scrappy to identify to the family level.
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Discussion questions
- Summarise the article in your own words. Which single claim would you verify first, and why?
- Which claim in this article is most likely to be revised as the sources update? How would you check its current status?
- If two sources disagreed about one of these facts, what would you need in order to trust one over the other?
Bibliography
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Key claims and bibliography are generated from the same tracked claims and sources as the article page.